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What’s Next for Lance Armstrong?

Lance Armstrong, during happier days, at the end of the 2004 Tour de France.

It is both hugely apt and a howling understatement to describe Lance Armstrong as epically motivated and single-mindedly competitive. There’s no way he could’ve won seven Tour de France yellow jerseys, no way he could’ve started a budding sideline as a triathlete or beaten cancer without the help of a once-every-couple-of-generations competitive motor.

Armstrong, whose long week started when a judge dismissed his lawsuit against Usada Monday, cited the hundreds of tests he has passed in the past. But, while his denials suggest he isn’t going quietly, Armstrong is definitely going. The decision not to fight the latest round of charges against him will have serious consequences. Those start with the Usada’s finding that all seven of his Tour de France wins should be stripped from him and extending to a ban from other World Anti-Doping Agency-signatory events that could end his career as a triathlete. The International Cycling Union does not appear eager to give the Usada the right to seize Armstrong’s yellow jerseys, which means that more legal wrangling is likely.

Armstrong, competitive to the last, is spinning this as a sort of ethical victory. It could also be viewed as a tactical retreat from the latest round of charges. Some commentators view it as a tacit admission of guilt. But Sports Illustrated’s Michael Rosenberg argues that it is grounded in a calculation. “Armstrong was losing this battle,” Rosenberg writes. “He can’t just hide the ball and declare the game over, except … Well, except maybe he can. He is banking on one thing here: That we don’t care if he used drugs. He is probably right.”

And so Armstrong will continue to work with his anti-cancer nonprofit, and likely continue to be an inspirational figure to many who care less about his yellow jerseys than his broader brand as inspiration personified. “The good that Armstrong has done through his Livestrong foundation is going to be perhaps the central aspect of Armstrong’s legacy, whether or not he was a blood doper,” New York’s Will Leitch writes. “This central fact is more important than arcane and complicated PED rules, or who-won-what-race win, or medals, or championships, or even the sport of cycling itself. Armstrong might not have deserved to be the guy to have inspired so many people, but he nevertheless was the one who did: That matters. That matters more than this.” Different observers may have different opinions on that, of course; it’s what comment sections are for. But Armstrong, at the very least and at last, seems to have made his position clear.

* * *

The NFL season isn’t here just yet, although the amount of Tebow-related noise emanating from your television might convince you otherwise. But if NFL anticipation seems peculiarly in the air at the moment—or anticipation cut with what is perhaps a large amount of anxiety and adorned with a pile of marked-up cheat sheets—that probably has something to do with the fact that now is high season for fantasy football drafts.

In recent years, fantasy football has come to rival—or complement—its actual-world counterpart in terms of popularity, ubiquity and purchase on sports fans’ mental real estate. That wasn’t always the case, to say the least. In the days before ESPN and Yahoo made online drafts a snap and point calculations an afterthought, fantasy football was a niche obsession among a small group of die-hards. Oakland bar manager Andrew Mousalimas was, and remains, one of those. In ESPN the Magazine, Morty Ain catches up with Mousalimas as he enters his 50th season in fantasy football. “We didn’t know what the hell was going on,” Mousalimas told Ain of the first fantasy football draft. “There were pretty simple rules, basically just points for touchdowns and field goals. You could take players from the AFL and NFL; it was before the merger. [former Oakland Tribune writer] Scotty [Stirling] and I had the first pick, and our decision was between George Blanda and Jim Brown.” Mousalimas opted for Blanda, and if he has spent the rest of his fantasy career regretting it, he at the very least never gave up on it. Something to remember at that moment in your draft when you start hating your team.

* * *

Steve Van Buren’s greatest years as a NFL running back came while Harry Truman was president, which renders them somewhat abstract from a present-day perspective. Yes, the numbers are there to peruse, as are the two NFL championships Van Buren won with the Philadelphia Eagles in 1948 and ’49. Then there are his four rushing titles. But in a way that’s uncommon for players of his era, Van Buren stayed a vital part of his organization—and an unusually beloved icon for fans—more than half a century after he last put on an Eagles uniform. It helped a great deal that the legendarily humble and world-historically tough Van Buren was an uncommonly human legend. When Van Buren died at the age of 91 on Thursday night, the NFL—and Eagles fans who lionized him despite having been born long after his last NFL carry—lost one of the game’s truest and most admirable throwbacks.

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Comments (5 of 41)

'...no way he could’ve started a budding sideline as a triathlete or beaten cancer without the help of a once-every-couple-of-generations competitive motor.' ~ David Roth

Patent nonsense. In 'Armstrong Acknowledges Cancer Battle', the NYT's Samuel Abt wrote on 9 October 1996:

'He said his doctor put his chances of recovery between 65 and 85 percent and described the state of his cancer as ''advanced.''

According to a spokesman for the National Cancer Institute, the five-year survival rate for testicular cancer, when it has spread to a distant site, as appears to be the case with Armstrong, is 72.2 percent.'

Weak, and vague charging documents made legal by the mere promise that you'll find out about your accusers on a later date. No physical evidence is actually needed. Perhaps detention in the meantime? You can accept guilt or go in front of a tribunal where at minimum one juror is in favor of the plantiff from the start?

It's should be pretty obvious why McCain loves NDAA, I mean USADA. Sad that the USADA model of prosecution is even allowed.

8:43 am August 25, 2012

Fed up 2 wrote:

The only way I'm going to believe that he doped is if comes out and says he did. Until then he still won all 7 TDF races in my mind.

6:29 am August 25, 2012

waiting wrote:

Still not sure why you haven't updated the picture caption. As another commenter above stated, it is a picture of Armstrong at the end of a stage of the Tour de France, clearly not at the END of the TdF.

5:39 am August 25, 2012

Soakneye wrote:

Maybe Lance's latest move will once again be inspirational and give people the courage to stand up to the legalise society that is burying the US and say I don't care what you think or do!

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